This is our first foray into any of Tenaya Creek's brews. This is their double IPA, Tandem. Tenaya Creek is out of Vegas, baby! I'm always up for discovering a new brewery, and Nathan was craving hops, so here we are. At 9% ABV, this should also be the perfect start to a Friday evening.
This pours a medium orange color, hazy with a decent-sized, fluffy head that has mostly dissipated in the short amount of time it took me to log into Blogger. The nose is heavily caramel, moderately citrus, with perhaps a hint of grass, and definite overtones of alcohol. The flavor is caramel, lychee (squee!), grapefruit, and some earthy, grassy notes sneaking in at the end. The finish on this is different. I'm trying to put my finger on what it is. OK, bear with me here... have you ever swallowed an aspirin without water? Yeah, it's like that. Or if you've taken a Dr. Goody's headache powder... it's like that. Almost a metallic aftertaste, with the bitterness and alcohol bite coming in. It's one of the strangest finishes on a beer I've had. Up until that point, it's a pretty decent beer. That aftertaste is very unsettling. The mouthfeel is well carbonated, and because of the heavy malts in here, it's pretty heavy-bodied, rather like if Guinness made an IPA. The super-aftertaste (read: flavor in the belch I just made -- discreetly, of course -- and while that may not be the most ladylike, it also is important to me in my beer flavor) is pure orange.
I'm completely conflicted. I enjoy the beginning of this, but not the finish. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. My face is screwed up in confusion. Even the cat is sniffing it and giving it a weird look. And now she's blocking the monitor again. Sigh. She thinks she's my muse, usually sitting off to the side of the computer desk while I write. Tonight, she's trying to become literate, staring at the screen rather intently. Cat removed (for the time being; she'll be back), I'm going to turn this over to Nathan.
3.95/5 caps
-Jennie
After letting this warm up with Jennie taking lead (me doing artwork followed by petting my little gray monster, Gia), let's figure out how this ranks up with the awesomeness that is Hops. Hopsus be with you (and also with you). And after chair dancing and singing to my Gia (Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order), it's time to stop pussy-footing around and get down to brass tacks. Enough of this PBR in my mouth, nay, I need hops.
This has a color that is a hazy brown orange muddled mess. But, oh you naysayers, say nay, as that's what you do. Don't let any appearance deter you from any beer. It goes back to the old English idiom of 'never judge a book by it's cover.' There is a bit of faint, wispy head lingering around to almost a translucent white hanging by a thread above this muddled concoction. The aroma, at this time, is malt heavy (caramel) with pine, earthy and herbal smells, almost a good Irish red aroma. And now, the long awaited taste. Where are the hops? There's an initial blast of caramel and grapefruit that fades instantly to an non-disclosed herbal tea. That tea like flavor fades while giving way to an alcohol bite toward the backend. Not what I consider a double IPA, let alone an IPA. The mouthfeel is thick with some slight resiny lingering along the gums and cheeks, but not the pucker power of, say, something like... well I just spent 5 minutes trying to figure out a beer to equate the heavy resin that I'm trying to equate that to and failed.
And there's the 9% kicking in after countless PBR and vodka. Time to crack open the next beer and finish out this month on a few good notes.
3.8/5
-Nathan-
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